This is exact at 11 degrees Aquarius, around 9:40 pm GMT on the 30th January.
And I like it quite a lot! Because Aquarius is progressive, revolutionary, electrifying. And detached. And lord knows we could all use a measure of detachment around this time, given how heavy and fateful these skies are.
About Aquarius: I associate this sign with Mr. Spock. Very rational, honest, scientific, disengaged from messy human emotion...but there is a big measure of inflexibility in this disengagement. A stubbornness. He is actually half-human, he does have emotions...but he regards them as 'illogical' and will not allow them any validity. And this is actually a form of aggression against the feeling side of his nature.
You can imagine how liberating it would be to hang out and talk ideas with Spock: you could say just about anything to him and he'd be impossible to shock. And he'd have plenty of fascinating facts and theories at his disposal about geeky stuff like how to build transponders out of rubindium crystals found on obscure asteroids.
But for an emotional person, hanging with Spock would feel pretty constricting: imagine trying to talk to Spock about your feelings! He'd probably sit there all deadpan, observing you as if you were some interesting new variety of microbe.
This is the paradox of Aquarius: open-minded and progressive on the one hand, utterly inflexible - in a way that can be cold and cruel - on the other. I'm thinking of Le Corbusier here, the French architect who dreamed of razing the poorer neighborhoods of Paris and replacing them with futuristic tower blocks. He wasn't thinking of the day-to-day lives of the people who lived in those areas - he didn't care about them or about the disruption to community life his plans would cause. He had his eyes fixed on a progressive dream of the perfect city, and who cared about the messy humans who got in the way of it?
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| Le Corbusier's 'Ville Radieuse' or Radiant City model |
--Of course plenty of people do live there: plenty of poor neighborhoods in plenty of cities were razed per Le Corbusier's ideas, and replaced with tower blocks. We know what wonderful places to live those are.
At worst, Aquarius can be like this: loving humanity in the abstract, but with no feeling for the needs of actual people. And utterly unrealistic in its future-oriented idealism.
There are two planetary rulers of the sign: Saturn (the traditional ruler) and Uranus (the modern ruler). Saturn is about constriction, and this is appropriate to the stubborn and emotionally detached nature of the sign.
But let's talk about Uranus, as this is the modern ruler of Aquarius. It was discovered in 1781, during an era of revolutions: scientific, political, social. This was the start of the industrial revolution - technology was about to change ordinary life in previously unimaginable ways. The American colonies were at war with England, two years away from winning and establishing a new government based on progressive ideals of democracy and the rights of man. And France was undergoing social upheaval that would lead to a shocking revolution - one that would turn all social norms and traditions upside-down and tear the country apart.
The outer planets, discovered in the modern era, owe a lot of their astrological symbolism to the times and circumstances of their discoveries, and Uranus has become symbolically tied up with the idea of shock, upheaval, progressive change and scientific discovery (it was the first planet to be discovered with a telescope). Look at this picture of it! No, the picture is not tilted wrong. Uranus is the only planet in the solar system with an axial tilt perpendicular to the plane of the solar system: it rotates sideways.
As if to signal: hey, I'm a freak! I don't care what all you boring-ass bourgeois planets do, I'm going to rotate my own damn way.
Well anyway, that was a long digression on Aquarius and Uranus, but I hope you see where I'm going with this. Aquarius represents progressive change, social idealism, rebellion, revolution, liberation. Also oddity and a detachment from messy human life and emotion that can be liberating... but also strange and cold.
New moons represent new beginnings, and a new moon in Aquarius is a chance to really detach from the past - from old patterns and habits and neuroses. To survey your life rationally and coldly, and to envision a different kind of future. It's an opportunity for radical transformation.
The sun and moon (and also Mercury) in Aquarius will be disposited by Uranus in Aries, which is about individual liberation and revolt.
And Uranus in Aries is currently bound up with some very heavy shit: he is squaring Pluto in Capricorn (rotten social structures and power hierarchies) for the next year, and is caught up in cardinal t-square formations with Jupiter in Cancer (huge emotions, woman power), and then Mars in Libra (a drive for fairness in relationships and social justice) which last until July.
And I will not even talk about April right now, except to say that the drama reaches crisis level intensity (yet again) in April....that's really soooooon.
In other words, there are a lot of things that need changing, especially in regard to relationships, entrenched power dynamics and financial issues. Collectively and personally, radical change is demanded of us - and it's coming, like it or not. And in ways that are likely to be very shocking and unpredictable, especially if you're not prepared to change, or unable. Some people really are not able to change, I know it. It's sad.
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| (Crappy day in dinosaur land) |
Shock coming out of a clear blue sky - well nobody wants that, but this is the cosmic weather we are living under, and it's good to be psychologically prepared, able to survey your options with clarity and to detach from what you don't need...and furthermore to think about what you actually want; what would improve matters. It might be something radically different and new: a complete break with the past.
The ability to cut cords and envisage something utterly new - that is the gift this new moon is giving us. Remember Aquarius is not just about logic and intellectual clarity and rebellion against the established order. It's also about hope. The dream of a better future, a fairer and more humane future - a future with room for you and your weird-ass freak flag.
Ok, so that's your new moon...use it! Any iota of intellectual detachment you can come by is valuable right now.
Because the cardinal t-square that is in effect now involves a lot of heaviness and emotional intensity. We have Jupiter in Cancer and Pluto in Capricorn in tight opposition, and Venus retrograding into a conjunction with Pluto. And all this is squaring Uranus in Aries.
And what's this about? Love and money, death and corruption. And huge feelings, broken hearts, broken dreams, rage. The need to change, to rebel...within a structure that does not allow change?
Miss Havisham's rotten wedding cake?
Juliet's corpse.
Is it time to let the romantic dreams go...to see them for the dried-up corpses they are?
Well of course it is. You know it is - it's way past time.
Venus conjunct Pluto in Capricorn is about wanting stability, security. Love you can bank on and money in the bank. Venus retrogrades are times of past relationships and their issues coming back to haunt us...past lovers, past patterns. They are also about reviewing and reconsidering financial matters - and this is especially evident with Venus in Capricorn, the sign of banking and career.
Venus goes direct the day after the new moon. So you can use this rational and distanced new moon to review how these issues impact your life very calmly and logically, like Spock would. And you can set a course for the future. Confirmation of your analysis should not be long in coming: you will know for sure what is real and viable, and what's a rotting wedding cake that should be thrown out already, after Venus goes direct.
And then you can get on with things. Like this, hopefully:
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